


serene with the time and ink of a ghost

by The_Bisexual_From_Hell



Series: what died didn't stay dead, you're alive, you're alive in my head [1]
Category: Station 19 (TV)
Genre: 3x07, Andy/Sullivan is implied, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Abuse, Gen, Ghosts, I'm Bad At Tagging, Lucas is ghost, Lucas thinks about vic a lot, Overdose, Substance Abuse, Vic is a hallucination but I still tagged her because she's there, he just wants to help his best friend, like a lot, vicley is relevant but not the main focus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:20:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28128273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Bisexual_From_Hell/pseuds/The_Bisexual_From_Hell
Summary: Lucas is dead, he knows he’s dead.He remembers dying, and some vaguely peaceful afterlife. It’s all just peace. Like floating in endless blankets of comfort, there’s no despair, nothing. His parents are there, Claire was there, he had cried when he first realized—apparently crying was possible in the afterlife—but it still feels empty.OrMy take on 3x07, in which Hallucination Ripley is actually Ghost Lucas trying to help Sullivan.
Relationships: Lucas Ripley & Robert Sullivan, Victoria Hughes/Lucas Ripley
Series: what died didn't stay dead, you're alive, you're alive in my head [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2060649
Comments: 8
Kudos: 12





	serene with the time and ink of a ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Hiiiiiiii 
> 
> This was really fun to write, so I hope y'all enjoy it. English is not my first language and my only beta is Grammarly, so go easy on me.
> 
> If you have seen 3x07 then you know what happens but if you haven't, please watch out for the possible triggers of drug abuse and a fentanyl overdose.

Lucas is dead, he knows he’s dead. 

He remembers dying, and some vaguely peaceful afterlife. It’s all just peace. Like floating in endless blankets of comfort, there’s no despair, nothing. His parents are there, Claire was there, he had cried when he first realized—apparently crying was possible in the afterlife—but it still feels empty. 

He was never a person that could do easy and quiet, he was a firefighter, he ran into the chaos and made it better again. Everything was quiet, his loved ones mourned him, and he was stuck in a perfectly peaceful afterlife, with the nagging feeling he had unfinished business. 

Except for when it isn’t. 

He watches over Jennifer. 

He watches over Victoria. Seeing her find someone again had hurt, but it was nothing compared to the blinding happiness he felt because he knew she was happy. Vic being happy is all he could ever want. 

He watches over Sullivan. 

Sully who doesn’t know how to ask for help when he needs it. 

Bobby who had shut him out for fifteen years because he was angry. 

Robert who is his best friend, always and forever. 

And it breaks Lucas’ heart to see that he’s struggling. Of course, it hurts, his best friend is in pain, and he is stuck in the next life, not being able to help. 

Sully who never even went for a second beer back when they were rookies at 88. 

His best friend is overdosing on Fentanyl. His entire crew is out on a call, except for the new probie, the son of the stupid cop that had taken his job. Lucas misses his best friend, he misses Sully so much it’s enough to feel it in the afterlife, but Lucas does not want to meet him again for a long time. 

He can watch, he can be there for Sully, even if his best friend doesn’t know it. Except Sullivan’s eyes are suddenly on him, and despite the fact that he is overdosing, he looks like he’s seeing a ghost. 

Lucas Ripley was the Fire Chief, he knew how to access a situation and fix it and if there’s even a chance that he can help his best friend, he’s going to take it, even if it hurts. 

“Man, I didn’t see that coming,” He has to be strong and snap Sullivan out of this if he wants a chance to survive. “What happened to you?” 

“Ah uh, I have this nerve thing in my leg” Robert sounds confused, disoriented, in pain.

“No, no.” It needs to hurt, his words need to cut deep because Sullivan needs to hear the damn truth. “Your moral compass. I must’ve tried thirty times to make you have a second beer and look at you now.” 

He looks at Sully like he’s judging like he’s some cocky Fire Chief that’s beyond everything. Thank god Lucas is a good liar. “Literally shooting up in your own firehouse” 

“It’s, it’s pain, it’s a real thing” The battalion Chief is having trouble forming sentences. 

“Hey, hey, who’s pain isn’t real. Surely you started to get that. That even if you do everything perfectly, follow every rule by the letter, life still hand’s you some pretty bitter lemons.” It’s exactly what he had done, he had followed the rules, made the rules even. Didn’t keep his parents from dying, didn’t keep him alive, life was more than just rules. 

“You could just keep that bitter face on and wouldn't wanna waste it” Sullivan is scowling, which means it’s working. He needs to keep going, not talk Robert into not giving up “See all you need is what you’ve always needed, more sugar.” 

Lucas needs to show Sullivan what he’s missing, what he could have, and maybe, just maybe Lucas is missing Vic—he’s always missing Vic, he loves her more than life itself—and that’s how he finds himself making out with a fake Vic.

Apparently has a ghost he can create hallucinations, or maybe it’s an illusion? He doesn’t really know how this all works or why. But he’s not going to question it now, especially when it gives him Vic, even for a split second. 

She looks beautiful, even when she’s not real. She’s the love of his life. No, he’s dead, there’s no life anymore, but she is the love of his existence, his light in the dark. He bases (or he guesses his mind does because he still has no idea how he’s doing all of this) his make out with Vic on a memory, they had been in this position so many times before. Not-Vic is sitting on his lap, with her arms around his shoulders. She’s wearing her hair down and she’s in her uniform, she looks exactly like she did when she held him as he died, minus the tears. 

“Hey, what are you two doing there?” Sullivan is clearly running out of patience. He is also running out of time. 

“What we should have done a lot more and a lot sooner.” Ghost Lucas is being arrogant and kind of a dick, but hey, he’s dead, his best friend is dying, and he’s sort of making out with his very-much-still-alive-fiancée’s illusion. So he won't be too hard on himself. 

“Why? You gonna tell on us?” Not-Vic sounds confident, and playful in a dangerous way. A way that back when he was alive, meant she was going to get everything she wanted that night. God, he misses her. He laughs into her neck, Not-Vic doesn’t smell like Vic used to smell, like home. It breaks his heart but this isn’t about her, not in this moment.

“You gonna write us up, Chief?” She’s laughing while she says it. He can only remember the times when people finding out about them was worse that could happen. 

“No, but this is a slippery slope,” Sullivan doesn’t know what’s happening, he only knows it's important. “You love somebody in your firehouse, you may lose judgment, and the moral of the company and lives are at stake, people may die.”

Lucas and Not-Vic can’t stop giggling, or maybe Lucas and the manifestation of his heart can’t stop giggling. Sully is talking like he isn’t speaking to his best friend’s ghost, maybe Sully thinks he’s talking to himself, and he’s talking about loving Andy. Either way, it makes Lucas laugh more than it should. 

“You can’t let yourself love,” Oh he is definitely talking about Andy, it doesn’t matter, Lucas knows his best friend, Robert hasn't felt like this for anyone since Claire, and he’s terrified. 

“If you can stop yourself from loving who you love,” It’s his biggest piece of advice and wisdom, and he can barely tear his gaze from his fiancée.

“Then I’d say you’re already dead.” Not-Vic finishes for him. “And in terms of the slippery slope,”

“I see at least two doses past the slippery slope.” He finishes the sentence for her this time and with that, she vanishes from his arms, as easily as his life has slipped through his fingers. He feels empty and cold, but it doesn’t matter he needs to finish this _soon_. Robert is running out of time, so Lucas pushes harder than he ever would if he were still alive. 

“Except when you die, and you will die one day, I can assure you of that.” Death comes for everyone, even when you least expect it. He has his whole life ahead of him with Victoria, and look at how he ended up. “Bobby, what do you want to be able to say about your time on earth? Hmm? That you did a good job? Or that you loved and were loved?” 

Lucas keeps moving around the room, Sully keeps chasing him with his eyes. That’s good, Sullivan’s body is pretty much passed out, but Lucas can keep his mind as sharp as possible.

“Can’t I have both?” Sully sounds like a lost puppy. 

“You can, ” Lucas’ knows that better than most, he had both, at the end of his life. “but it’s harder if you get the order wrong. You see, people, me included, they think that if you did a good job, then you’ll finally have the time to love. It’s wrong” 

Lucas had wasted so much of his time getting it wrong, so much of his time trying to figure out how he could be with Vic, and not actually spending it with her. He got it right at the end when it counted. 

“Work is never finished, the job is never done perfectly enough, meanwhile the people who need you, and want you, and see the real you, they wait, and they wait, and they wait.” Vic had waited for him at the diner, he would wait for her in the After. 

“I had love. I had Claire” Sullivan is angry, that’s good, Lucas can work with anger. 

“Claire would want you to be happy.” It’s the truth, Lucas had seen her in the After, all she wanted was for Bobby to be happy. Lucas wants Victoria to be happy more than anything, no matter with whom. “Claire is gone, my friend. You, you are not gone, not yet anyway.” 

He is running out of time. Robert is clearly processing everything, Lucas gets that, the world is painful and horrible, especially when you feel alone, which is why Lucas just needs to get him through this, then it's up to the living. 

“I think I have a problem.” Sullivan’s speech is getting more slurred. Lucas l laughs in such a cruel way, he shocks himself. 

“I know you have a problem,” Now or never Lucas thinks “What are you gonna do about it?”

“I- I don’t know what to do about it.” Sully sounds scared, it makes Lucas want to cry. 

“It’s not surprising, you are good at almost everything, except asking for help.” Victoria could be like that sometimes, it's fitting that his favorite people have things in common. “Which may be your downfall” 

Lucas really really hopes it isn’t. He covers it up with a pat on the shoulder (Can Sullivan even feel it?) and more amused highschool bully-like laughing. 

“Irony can be ugly, am I right?” He sounds like an asshole, but it’s the wake-up call Robert needs. 

“Really hard,” Sully mumbles, he’s getting worse. “And I'm still hurting.” 

“Hurting is living.” Going by that definition, Lucas is also alive, he is in pain too, he misses Vic, but he is not about to get into the philosophical technicalities right now. 

“That’s how you know you’re alive,” Lucas says in German, maybe talking to Sully in his first language—Lucas didn’t know German, maybe it’s another afterlife superpower—will make Sully understand and so still in German he continues. “Wanna trade places?”

Lucas needs Robert to understand how serious this is, how easily, and how fast, he could end up like Ripley. Sullivan’s face is contorted with pain, he is struggling against his inner demons and fighting the overdose.

“Well, if you can’t get it in your first language, I’m never gonna reach you.” This is his last resort Robert Sullivan hates being underestimated, hates having his ability questioned. Roberts stands up from his desk chair, clearly disoriented, but its progress, it means his body is fighting to live. 

“Where are you going?” He is so close. 

“I need to get out of here. I need to—” Sullivan’s voice is groggy. And somehow, Lucas knows he did it, his best friend will not be dying today. Robert got the second chance Ripley never did.

“It’s time to let go my friend, it is time to change your life. All of it, from the top down these chances don’t come around every day.” Lucas is so proud, but he can’ show it yet, he needs to make sure this never happens again. “And if you don’t take it, well you may end up just a vision in someone’s drug-addled overdose.” 

“Overdose?” is all Sullivan manages to say before collapsing on the floor. That’s alright, Lucas knows he’ll pull through, and get clean. He has done his part. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked it. 
> 
> I definitely wrote it in a grief-fit right after watching 3x07 and crying for about an hour. This is actually my first story in a series working on, it's about Ghost Ripley and grief and moving on. I promise I'm already writing the next one and it's way more Vicley centric. 
> 
> Leave a kudos and/or comment to give me a serotonin boost. 
> 
> Feel free to follow or send me a dm on Twitter @DXNYARYA


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